My favourite synths: Darren Price

24th Sep 2012 | 15:09

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GForce impOSCar2

With praise still ringing in their ears for their soundtracking of the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, it’s been a big year for Underworld. Here, the band’s DJ and engineer Darren Price tells us which soft synths he likes to keep close at hand.

Darren Price: “This is the one I use most in the studio. It’s an inspiration to use, and it makes it easy to create new, fresh and fat sounds that really cut through. It also has a fantastic arpeggiator and chord memory. I liked impOSCar2 so much I hassled the makers for one of the rare hardware controllers!”

Spectrasonics Omnisphere

“Designed by Eric Persing, one of the masters of the game, Omnisphere is a super-powered synth with very high-quality samples - these guys know how to sample! Load a choir preset, play a few notes on your keyboard, close your eyes and it’s like the choir is right there in the studio. A very impressive achievement.”

Rob Papen SubBoomBass

“This one goes lower than low. There are presets that make my cup move across the table if I turn it up loud enough! It’s not just for bass, though - there’s a vast array of other stuff like deep tribal toms and percussion as well as leads and pads.”

GForce Virtual String Machine

“Loaded up with emulations of Oberheim, Moog, RP and all the other synths that are virtually impossible to find nowadays, Virtual String Machine is like taking a virtual trip back in time. As someone who’s lucky enough to own most of the real synths, I’ve done some A-B comparisons, and the results have been surprisingly good.”